What is the connection between branding and Michelangelo's Pieta?

Do you know that Pieta is the only work he ever signed?

There is the inscription on the stash of Mary's robe:
MICHAELA[N]GELUS BONAROTUS FLORENTIN[US] FACIEBA[T] (Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made it)

Michelangelo overheard someone remark that it was the work of another sculptor, Cristoforo Solari. After this Michelangelo added that inscription.

Branding was not invented in the modern age, people always wanted to protect their right to say "I made it".